DocuSign, Zoom, and Twilio thrived in the pandemic-era stock market. In 2024, they're some of cloud software's most likely M&A targets.

DocuSign could be one of the first cloud software acquisitions of 2024. Private equity firms Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman are competing for a leveraged buyout of the $12.8 billion maker of e-signature technology, Reuters reported in January. DocuSign went public in 2018. Valued then at about $4 billion, the company was one of several unicorns, including Dropbox and Spotify, to go public that year. DocuSign's share price tripled during the remote work boom in 2020 and 2021, but it fell to its pre-pandemic value as return-to-office mandates proliferated in 2022.

Shares of file storage platform Box lagged in 2023, and on the company's third-quarter earnings call in December, CEO Aaron Levie said he couldn't promise a recovery anytime soon, citing macroeconomic pressures. Box went public in 2015 and has grappled with modest revenue growth. The company has a market cap of $3.7 billion, one-third the size of rival Dropbox.

Zoom's stock price has fallen dramatically from its peak at the height of the pandemic, from over $500 per share in late 2020 to less than $70 per share today. While there's been some talk of a potential buyout by a private equity or strategic buyer, the video conferencing company has recently focused on making its own acquisitions of smaller start-ups, including Workvivo, Solvvy, and assets of Liminal. Last month, cloud-based contact center service provider Five9 denied talk of a potential Zoom takeover.

Having begun the year embroiled in a battle with activist investors, Twilio is a natural candidate for takeover rumors. In January, founder and CEO Jeff Lawson stepped down from the company and relinquished his board seat. Khozema Shipchandler, a longtime Twilio executive, replaced him. The company's share price has dropped significantly since its pandemic-era peak, and it laid off 17% of its workforce in early 2023.

Sales and marketing intelligence platform ZoomInfo's stock suffered last year as enterprise customers sought ways to reduce costs. Competitors such as Apollo already offer similar services for a cheaper price, Jaluria wrote in a recent note to investors. HubSpot's recent acquisition of Clearbit will likely make the competitive market even tougher for ZoomInfo.

SolarWinds may go private sometime early this year, Bloomberg reported. The network monitoring software company became a household name in 2020 after falling victim to a major cybersecurity breach that exposed big business and U.S. government clients. A complaint filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission last year suggests the hack could have been prevented had the company addressed concerns one of its network engineers raised.

Shares of Fastly have fallen sharply from their pandemic-era peak in 2020 and now trade below their 2019 market debut price. The edge computing platform was previously rumored to be Alphabet's takeover target.